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Showing posts with label bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bible. Show all posts
Monday, July 22, 2013
A FEW MORMONS LEARN WHAT ALL FAITHS NEED TO KNOW
Friday, October 16, 2009
AN ADAPTATION CALLED MORALITY
The following is a commentary I entered into the debates that go on all the time on the Columbian website in Vancouver, Washington:
Ray M.... Since it's now tomorrow, I don't know if you'll read this.
You mention a couple of excellent rules for behavior within a culture and, then, credit them to the Bible. Actually, those ideas are inherent within the human animal as we evolved through time. You will find those rules within all cultures and religions, past and present, with slight modifications. I'm an atheist, and I don't need a hypothetical superbeing to tell me that I ought to feel bad if someone steals something of value from me. My feelings inform me pretty well as to how nasty stealing feels, so of course I want laws to protect me from thieves. Bible people just wrote down what people were feeling at the time about the thieves among them and the adulterers, et cetera. Now, of course, we've learned that adulterers are always among us and that, often, those most vociferous about the evils of adultery are the ones practicing it on the sly.
Some will now say, "But what about people whose feelings don't agree with yours?" There are such people as that. They're called sociopaths, and they threaten cultural norms, but most people have evolved the same feeling structure as their neighbors and, thus, agree as to common rules for good social harmony. Less threatening and more helpful are those people who aren't comfortable within whatever culture they're born into. They are always demanding that we reevaluate our cultural priorities. If we didn't change and adapt, of course we'd die out as a species, so those people are healthy in a society. People like the latter brought us democracy. Though I'm an atheist, I recognize that Martin Luther brought needed reform to the Catholic Church, and Protestantism soon followed. Hopefully, Richard Dawkins will help end Protestantism and usher in Humanism as an ethical basis for cultural cohesion.
People interested in the subject of how morality is an adapted trait might like to read The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
The following is a commentary I entered into the debates that go on all the time on the Columbian website in Vancouver, Washington:
Ray M.... Since it's now tomorrow, I don't know if you'll read this.
You mention a couple of excellent rules for behavior within a culture and, then, credit them to the Bible. Actually, those ideas are inherent within the human animal as we evolved through time. You will find those rules within all cultures and religions, past and present, with slight modifications. I'm an atheist, and I don't need a hypothetical superbeing to tell me that I ought to feel bad if someone steals something of value from me. My feelings inform me pretty well as to how nasty stealing feels, so of course I want laws to protect me from thieves. Bible people just wrote down what people were feeling at the time about the thieves among them and the adulterers, et cetera. Now, of course, we've learned that adulterers are always among us and that, often, those most vociferous about the evils of adultery are the ones practicing it on the sly.
Some will now say, "But what about people whose feelings don't agree with yours?" There are such people as that. They're called sociopaths, and they threaten cultural norms, but most people have evolved the same feeling structure as their neighbors and, thus, agree as to common rules for good social harmony. Less threatening and more helpful are those people who aren't comfortable within whatever culture they're born into. They are always demanding that we reevaluate our cultural priorities. If we didn't change and adapt, of course we'd die out as a species, so those people are healthy in a society. People like the latter brought us democracy. Though I'm an atheist, I recognize that Martin Luther brought needed reform to the Catholic Church, and Protestantism soon followed. Hopefully, Richard Dawkins will help end Protestantism and usher in Humanism as an ethical basis for cultural cohesion.
People interested in the subject of how morality is an adapted trait might like to read The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
Friday, September 04, 2009
DEMONSTRATING IGNORANCE TO MANY PEOPLE
Today, my wife and I drove over to the Crescent City on the Northern California coast. Coming back along I-5, we passed a garage or shed with its back to the highway. On its surface in large letters, its owner had written: PRAISE GOD.
My wife and I laughed. Praise God. Is that the being who doomed the entire human race to die because they exercised the supposedly free will he'd given them to use in a free way? What's to praise? Seems he really didn't mean them to have free will except as limited by his king like orders. So they weren't actually free. So, for disobeying a little thing like eating and becoming as wise as god imagined he was wise, this god fellow murders every human being on earth, constantly, each and every day. Then, as atonement for his unrelieved cruelty toward the human race, he makes it up by killing his own son. That's right, two wrongs somehow make a right.
Then there's another piece of insanity in that whole scenario. As I recall, this hypothetical superbeing was afraid that his human slaves would eat of the tree of life and have eternal life. Now wait a minute. I thought these human being already had eternal life. That's why god decided that they must die, that he must take away their eternal lives, but then why was he afraid that they'd eat of the tree of life since they already had eternal life before he doomed them to die? Something awfully circular and crazy in this whole account of the origins of the human species and life and death. Funny no one ever noticed these things back in the darkest days of human intelligence. Seems that for humankind to really get wise and intelligent, they took many millennia. Why did this hypothetical superbeing think that ignorant twosome had grown wise in the first place? They were pretty ignorant after all, so if their intelligence, dim as it was, nearly equaled his intelligence, he (the hypothetical one) was himself dumb as a post. Lot's of twists and turns in here, aren't there?
Praise god, my ass. Glad to be rid of the hypothesis of him, I'd say.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
MOVIE REVIEW AND BIBLE SENDUP
Dear Editor,
Jeez! I can hardly wait not to see that heart warming comedy/horror flick, “Evan Almighty”, based on that mythological Bible story in which the Judeo-Christian-Islamic hypothetical superbeing murders the entire human race for daring to exercise its hypothetical free will. Hunh? A free will that can only be used to not use free will? Ah—these religious guys—they’re certainly some kidders, eh?
I must admit that the murder of everyone in the whole world whose willfulness disagrees with mine is an interesting concept, but, given my economic limitations and my powerlessness in the face of the immense numbers of humankind who disagree with one or another of my ideas, I guess I’ll just have to stick to my sturdy imagination for my titillation just as the writers of the Noah fiction and other Bible fantasies used theirs. I’m rather intrigued, however, by the fact that so many of my fellow beans would derive a kick out of the story of their own murder and the murder of all their family and friends. Could it be that just way too many of my fellow humans imagine themselves of an hypothetically superior morality? Free even of the sin of pride?
Laughingly Yours,
Geo
Dear Editor,
Jeez! I can hardly wait not to see that heart warming comedy/horror flick, “Evan Almighty”, based on that mythological Bible story in which the Judeo-Christian-Islamic hypothetical superbeing murders the entire human race for daring to exercise its hypothetical free will. Hunh? A free will that can only be used to not use free will? Ah—these religious guys—they’re certainly some kidders, eh?
I must admit that the murder of everyone in the whole world whose willfulness disagrees with mine is an interesting concept, but, given my economic limitations and my powerlessness in the face of the immense numbers of humankind who disagree with one or another of my ideas, I guess I’ll just have to stick to my sturdy imagination for my titillation just as the writers of the Noah fiction and other Bible fantasies used theirs. I’m rather intrigued, however, by the fact that so many of my fellow beans would derive a kick out of the story of their own murder and the murder of all their family and friends. Could it be that just way too many of my fellow humans imagine themselves of an hypothetically superior morality? Free even of the sin of pride?
Laughingly Yours,
Geo
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
THIS IS THE WAY IT WAS. . . .
NO, THIS WAY. . . .
ARE YOU KIDDEN, I SAW. . . .
EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS ARE LEAST RELIABLE
How the Jews came to be the fall guys or here are some more paragraphs from the book pictured below:
[SLICE]
Modern scholars are unanimous in concurring that the Gospels do not date from Jesus' lifetime. For the most part they date from the period between the two major revolts in Judaea—66 to 74 and 132 to l35—although they are almost certainly based on earlier accounts. These earlier accounts may have included written documents since lost—for there was a wholesale destruction of records in the wake of the first rebellion. But there would certainly have been oral traditions as well. Some of these were undoubtedly grossly exaggerated and/or distorted, received and transmitted at second, third or fourth hand. Others, however, may have derived from individuals who were alive in Jesus' lifetime and may even have known him personally. A young man at the time of the Crucifixion might well have been alive when the Gospels were composed [doubtful].
The earliest of the Gospels is generally considered to be Mark's, composed sometime during the revolt of 66-74 or shortly thereafter—except for its treatment of the Resurrection, which is a later and spurious addition. Although not himself one of Jesus' original disciples, Mark seems to have come from Jerusalem. He seems to have been a companion of Saint Paul, and his Gospel bears an unmistakable stamp of Pauline thought. But if Mark was a native of Jerusalem, his Gospel—as Clement of Alexandria states—was composed in Rome and addressed to a Greco-Roman audience. This in itself explains a great deal. At the time that Mark's Gospel was composed, Judaea was, or had recently been, in open revolt, and thousands of Jews were being crucified for rebellion against the Roman regime. If Mark wished his Gospel to survive and impress itself on a Roman audience, he could not possibly present Jesus as anti-Roman. Indeed, he could not feasibly present Jesus as politically oriented at all. In order to ensure the survival of his message he would have been obliged to exonerate the Romans of all guilt for Jesus' death—to whitewash the existing and entrenched regime and blame the death of the Messiah on certain Jews. This device was adopted, not only by the authors of the other Gospels, but by the early Christian Church as well. Without such a device neither Gospels nor Church would have survived.
The Gospel of Luke is dated by scholars at around A.D, 80. Luke himself appears to have been a Greek doctor who composed his work for a high-ranking Roman official at Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine. For Luke, too, therefore, it would have been necessary to placate and appease the Romans and transfer the blame elsewhere. [colors mine] By the time the Gospel of Matthew was composed—approximately A.D. 85—such a transference seems to have been accepted as an established fact and gone unquestioned. More than half of Matthew's Gospel, in fact, is derived directly from Mark's, although it was composed originally in Greek and reflects specifically Greek characteristics. The author seems to have been a Jew, quite possibly a refugee from Palestine. He is not to be confused with the disciple named Matthew, who would have lived much earlier and would probably have known only Aramaic.
The Gospels of Mark, Luke, and Matthew are known collectively as the Synoptic Gospels, implying that they see "eye to eye" or " with one eye"—which, of course, they do not [colors mine]. Nevertheless, there is enough overlap between them to suggest that they derived from a single common source—either an oral tradition or some other document subsequently lost. This distinguishes them from the Gospel of John, which betrays significantly different origins.
Nothing whatever is known about the author of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed there is no reason to assume his name was John. Except for John the Baptist, the name John is mentioned at no point in the Gospel itself, and its attribution to a man called John is generally accepted as later tradition. The Fourth Gospel is the latest of those in the New Testament—composed around A.D. 100 in the vicinity of the Greek city of Ephesus. It displays a number of quite distinctive features. There is no Nativity scene, for example, no description whatever of Jesus' birth, and the opening is almost Gnostic in character. The text is of a decidedly more mystical nature than the other Gospels, and the content differs as well. The other Gospels, for instance, concentrate primarily on Jesus' activities in the northern province of Galilee and reflect what appears to be only a second- or third-hand knowledge of events to the south in Judaea and Jerusalem—including the Crucifixion. The Fourth Gospel, in contrast, says relatively little about Galilee. It dwells exhaustively on the events in Judaea and Jerusalem that concluded Jesus' career, and its account of the Crucifixion may well rest ultimately on some first-hand eyewitness testimony. It also contains a number of episodes and incidents that do not figure in the other Gospels at all—the wedding at Cana, the roles of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and the raising of Lazarus (although the last of these was once included in Mark's Gospel). On the basis of such factors modern scholars have suggested that the Gospel of John, despite its late composition, may well be the most reliable and historically accurate of the four. More than the other Gospels it seems to draw upon traditions current among contemporaries of Jesus, as well as other material unavailable to Mark, Luke, and Matthew. One modern researcher points out that it reflects an apparently first-hand topographical knowledge of Jerusalem prior to the revolt of A.D. 66. The same author concludes, "'Behind the Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the other Gospels.” This is not an isolated opinion. In fact, it is the most prevalent in modern biblical scholarship. According to another writer, "The Gospel of John, though not adhering to the Markian chronological framework and being much later in date, appears to know a tradition concerning Jesus that must be primitive and authentic."
[SEW]
NO, THIS WAY. . . .
ARE YOU KIDDEN, I SAW. . . .
EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS ARE LEAST RELIABLE
How the Jews came to be the fall guys or here are some more paragraphs from the book pictured below:
[SLICE]
Modern scholars are unanimous in concurring that the Gospels do not date from Jesus' lifetime. For the most part they date from the period between the two major revolts in Judaea—66 to 74 and 132 to l35—although they are almost certainly based on earlier accounts. These earlier accounts may have included written documents since lost—for there was a wholesale destruction of records in the wake of the first rebellion. But there would certainly have been oral traditions as well. Some of these were undoubtedly grossly exaggerated and/or distorted, received and transmitted at second, third or fourth hand. Others, however, may have derived from individuals who were alive in Jesus' lifetime and may even have known him personally. A young man at the time of the Crucifixion might well have been alive when the Gospels were composed [doubtful].
The earliest of the Gospels is generally considered to be Mark's, composed sometime during the revolt of 66-74 or shortly thereafter—except for its treatment of the Resurrection, which is a later and spurious addition. Although not himself one of Jesus' original disciples, Mark seems to have come from Jerusalem. He seems to have been a companion of Saint Paul, and his Gospel bears an unmistakable stamp of Pauline thought. But if Mark was a native of Jerusalem, his Gospel—as Clement of Alexandria states—was composed in Rome and addressed to a Greco-Roman audience. This in itself explains a great deal. At the time that Mark's Gospel was composed, Judaea was, or had recently been, in open revolt, and thousands of Jews were being crucified for rebellion against the Roman regime. If Mark wished his Gospel to survive and impress itself on a Roman audience, he could not possibly present Jesus as anti-Roman. Indeed, he could not feasibly present Jesus as politically oriented at all. In order to ensure the survival of his message he would have been obliged to exonerate the Romans of all guilt for Jesus' death—to whitewash the existing and entrenched regime and blame the death of the Messiah on certain Jews. This device was adopted, not only by the authors of the other Gospels, but by the early Christian Church as well. Without such a device neither Gospels nor Church would have survived.
The Gospel of Luke is dated by scholars at around A.D, 80. Luke himself appears to have been a Greek doctor who composed his work for a high-ranking Roman official at Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine. For Luke, too, therefore, it would have been necessary to placate and appease the Romans and transfer the blame elsewhere. [colors mine] By the time the Gospel of Matthew was composed—approximately A.D. 85—such a transference seems to have been accepted as an established fact and gone unquestioned. More than half of Matthew's Gospel, in fact, is derived directly from Mark's, although it was composed originally in Greek and reflects specifically Greek characteristics. The author seems to have been a Jew, quite possibly a refugee from Palestine. He is not to be confused with the disciple named Matthew, who would have lived much earlier and would probably have known only Aramaic.
The Gospels of Mark, Luke, and Matthew are known collectively as the Synoptic Gospels, implying that they see "eye to eye" or " with one eye"—which, of course, they do not [colors mine]. Nevertheless, there is enough overlap between them to suggest that they derived from a single common source—either an oral tradition or some other document subsequently lost. This distinguishes them from the Gospel of John, which betrays significantly different origins.
Nothing whatever is known about the author of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed there is no reason to assume his name was John. Except for John the Baptist, the name John is mentioned at no point in the Gospel itself, and its attribution to a man called John is generally accepted as later tradition. The Fourth Gospel is the latest of those in the New Testament—composed around A.D. 100 in the vicinity of the Greek city of Ephesus. It displays a number of quite distinctive features. There is no Nativity scene, for example, no description whatever of Jesus' birth, and the opening is almost Gnostic in character. The text is of a decidedly more mystical nature than the other Gospels, and the content differs as well. The other Gospels, for instance, concentrate primarily on Jesus' activities in the northern province of Galilee and reflect what appears to be only a second- or third-hand knowledge of events to the south in Judaea and Jerusalem—including the Crucifixion. The Fourth Gospel, in contrast, says relatively little about Galilee. It dwells exhaustively on the events in Judaea and Jerusalem that concluded Jesus' career, and its account of the Crucifixion may well rest ultimately on some first-hand eyewitness testimony. It also contains a number of episodes and incidents that do not figure in the other Gospels at all—the wedding at Cana, the roles of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and the raising of Lazarus (although the last of these was once included in Mark's Gospel). On the basis of such factors modern scholars have suggested that the Gospel of John, despite its late composition, may well be the most reliable and historically accurate of the four. More than the other Gospels it seems to draw upon traditions current among contemporaries of Jesus, as well as other material unavailable to Mark, Luke, and Matthew. One modern researcher points out that it reflects an apparently first-hand topographical knowledge of Jerusalem prior to the revolt of A.D. 66. The same author concludes, "'Behind the Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the other Gospels.” This is not an isolated opinion. In fact, it is the most prevalent in modern biblical scholarship. According to another writer, "The Gospel of John, though not adhering to the Markian chronological framework and being much later in date, appears to know a tradition concerning Jesus that must be primitive and authentic."
[SEW]
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
GOD DON’T MAKE NO JUNK?
I’ve found this little espresso joint in Vancouver Washington called “Café Divine”. It’s attached to a Christian bookstore, and, yes, the espresso joint is full of Bible-reading Christians. I think I’m going to have to find a different place to drink my espressos and do my algebra problems. Here’s why.
Yesterday, I heard one of the Bible people tell another Bible person that “God don’t make no junk.” Another time, I heard one claim that “God don’t make no mistakes.” Lot’s of false and crazy info floating around the place. I don’t want to be corrupted by so much wrong information.
I’ve searched and I’ve searched, and I can’t find anywhere in the Bible the claim that “God don’t make no junk”. And I’m almost certain that God has made a mistake or two. I think he regretted that he wiped out most of the human race and promised never to do it again. Now, I’ve never regretted doing something right. In fact, I usually rejoice when I do do something correctly.
Not only can’t I find anywhere in that bad old book that God don’t make no junk, I also find lots of information that these folks never seem to hear. For instance he wants them to stone to death all adulterers. He doesn’t want them eating shellfish. He tells them to “beat” their children and that their eyes must look into there own bellies. Over and over he tells them to be stupid and to honor ignorance. (Most Christians do honor those last two admonitions.) He tells them not to charge interest rates. He tells women not to wear trousers and men skirts unless they be male Scottish Christians. Then it’s okay to wear skirts. All young women who have premarital sex are to be stoned to death also. As Bob Dylan notes in his interpretation of the good book, “Every body must get stoned.”
God tells Christians to eat the pygarg too, if they can find one. He also tells them not to eat pork which only the Jewish Christians adhere to. He also tells them not to make “burnt offerings” to him, so why do Christians support capital punishment? Of course, many times in Deuteronomy God mentions that only Israel has to obey these many rules for living so why do American Christians obey any of them? Can’t they read? Not only these things do I mention, but God tells Christians in Deuteronomy 7 and beyond to utterly smite and destroy their enemies, to push them out of their lands and to do all manner of foul things to people who don’t believe as Christians do. . . . Wait! Now, there, Christians have been very obedient. You’d almost think that they’re just like the Moslems who they claim are out to destroy everyone who isn’t a Moslem.
Anyhow—you get my drift. Enough said. The three pictures included in the text are of our new digs in Vancouver. Pretty pretty if you ask me.
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I’ve found this little espresso joint in Vancouver Washington called “Café Divine”. It’s attached to a Christian bookstore, and, yes, the espresso joint is full of Bible-reading Christians. I think I’m going to have to find a different place to drink my espressos and do my algebra problems. Here’s why.
Yesterday, I heard one of the Bible people tell another Bible person that “God don’t make no junk.” Another time, I heard one claim that “God don’t make no mistakes.” Lot’s of false and crazy info floating around the place. I don’t want to be corrupted by so much wrong information.
I’ve searched and I’ve searched, and I can’t find anywhere in the Bible the claim that “God don’t make no junk”. And I’m almost certain that God has made a mistake or two. I think he regretted that he wiped out most of the human race and promised never to do it again. Now, I’ve never regretted doing something right. In fact, I usually rejoice when I do do something correctly.
Not only can’t I find anywhere in that bad old book that God don’t make no junk, I also find lots of information that these folks never seem to hear. For instance he wants them to stone to death all adulterers. He doesn’t want them eating shellfish. He tells them to “beat” their children and that their eyes must look into there own bellies. Over and over he tells them to be stupid and to honor ignorance. (Most Christians do honor those last two admonitions.) He tells them not to charge interest rates. He tells women not to wear trousers and men skirts unless they be male Scottish Christians. Then it’s okay to wear skirts. All young women who have premarital sex are to be stoned to death also. As Bob Dylan notes in his interpretation of the good book, “Every body must get stoned.”
God tells Christians to eat the pygarg too, if they can find one. He also tells them not to eat pork which only the Jewish Christians adhere to. He also tells them not to make “burnt offerings” to him, so why do Christians support capital punishment? Of course, many times in Deuteronomy God mentions that only Israel has to obey these many rules for living so why do American Christians obey any of them? Can’t they read? Not only these things do I mention, but God tells Christians in Deuteronomy 7 and beyond to utterly smite and destroy their enemies, to push them out of their lands and to do all manner of foul things to people who don’t believe as Christians do. . . . Wait! Now, there, Christians have been very obedient. You’d almost think that they’re just like the Moslems who they claim are out to destroy everyone who isn’t a Moslem.
Anyhow—you get my drift. Enough said. The three pictures included in the text are of our new digs in Vancouver. Pretty pretty if you ask me..
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